


there's still a song inside the halls in the dark (i'll come for you if you just stay where you are)

by reachedthebitterend



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-08-19 05:02:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20204155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reachedthebitterend/pseuds/reachedthebitterend
Summary: There's a melody that's always been stuck in Michael's head, Alex turns it into a song.





	there's still a song inside the halls in the dark (i'll come for you if you just stay where you are)

**Author's Note:**

> written 06/17/19

The first time that Michael speaks to Alex outside of school is at the end of the year senior camping trip.

The only reason Michael is there is because Isobel used reverse psychology to get him to drive her there, and then borrows the back of his truck to hang out with her friends, who don’t even seem to realize that Michael is there.

Not that Michael cares.

He drinks watered down beer from a red solo cup, and tries not to feel as out of place as he probably looks.

Isobel laughs at something, and it drags his attention away from the kids starting a bonfire to her.

A flash of silver catches his attention and he turns to see Alex, sneaking away, between the cars parked on the other end of the clearing, heading up the overhang, a guitar strapped to his back.

Michael doesn’t even think twice about it before he’s downing the rest of his beer and following after him.

He’s making enough noise that Alex should be aware of his presence, but then Michael spots the headphones stuck over his head.

Michael slows down a little when he gets a look at the view when the tree line suddenly disappears as they round the corner at the top of the overhang, and the sky is bright and full of stars.

When he looks back to Alex it’s to see him settle down on the rocky floor, spreading a notebook open in the ground in front of him, with his guitar cradled in his lap, an electric lamp, buzzing right beside the notebook.

Michael doesn’t know how long he watches him as he tugs his headphones down to his neck and then goes through practice chords to warm up. It’s only when he’s looking down at the notebook seriously before he starts playing something that Michael has never heard before, that Michael realizes, maybe he should make his presence known.

He kicks at a rock and it goes flying near Alex who looks up alarmed. Michael tries to pretend that he didn’t even notice Alex there, and tries to smile when Alex’s shoulders relax just a tiny bit when he sees him.

“Hey,” Michael says, and walks closer.

“What are you doing here?” Alex asks, voice wary even though he looks like he’ll punch Michael in the face if he tries anything.

“Needed to escape,” he says, a half lie.

Alex purses his mouth, and Michael stops moving a few feet away, trying to look non threatening.

“Too many straight people, you know?”

Alex’s lips twitch, but he clenches his jaw and looks at Michael like this is all a trick, before he reaches for his notebook and closes it.

“You write?” Michael asks before Alex can do anything else, like leave.

Alex licks his lips and looks at Michael like he’s searching for something before he nods his head.

“I-” he starts and swallows hard and looks down at the guitar in his hands. “Music helps me a lot. Especially when I feel like there’s nothing or no one that will understand. And I’ve always wanted to give that to someone, the sense that there is someone else out there who understands you because the world is a lonely place, and we all deserve to feel a little bit less alone-”

He trails off slowly and Michael sees the way his eyes go a little wide as though he can’t believe he said all of that.

Michael sits down across from him and Alex’s eyes snap to him immediately.

“I get it,” he says, and motions towards Alex’s guitar. Alex gives him a look, and sighs before he hands it over, carefully, like he’s afraid Michael might run off with it.

Which might be a valid concern since Michael has stolen it out of the music room more times than he can count.

Michael settles the guitar in his lap, and it’s familiar enough that Michael can find the chords without looking.

“Playing is the only thing that helps me go quiet,” he says, looking up at Alex, who is leaning his elbows on his knees looking at him.

“Quiet?” He asks, tilting his head.

Michael licks his lips, and lifts a hand in the air, trying to explain. “I have all this chaos inside of me, and sometimes when it gets too much and I just want to get away from myself, I play, and my entropy changes and everything goes quiet.”

He sets his hands back on the chords, and closes his eyes to get away from the look on Alex’s face.

It’s not bad exactly, but Michael doesn’t really understand it.

No one has ever looked at him the way that Alex does, the way that Michael looks at the guitars behind the windowpane of the music shop, like he wants him, but can’t have him.

Which is ridiculous, if Alex ever makes a move on him, Michael might spontaneously combust, but from the sheer excitement.

So he doesn’t get why Alex has never tried even when Michael keeps dropping these hints that he’s not straight.

Michael loses time fast when he’s playing, and it goes by even faster if he’s thinking about Alex.

He doesn’t realize that it’s been a while, until he feels something press against his knee.

He blinks his eyes open to see that Alex is much closer than he was before, he’s scribbling something in his notebook, balanced on his knee, and he’s humming, and Michael feels a jolt go through him when he picks out the melody of the song he’d just been playing.

Alex looks up when Michael’s hands slam over the strings, stilling the vibrations.

His eyes are wide, and he looks like he’s on a whole other planet before he blinks twice and focuses on Michael.

“Sorry,” he says and moves back a little, before he licks his lips and leans forward a little.

“Did you write that?” He asks, looking as though he’s about to vibrate out of his skin.

Michael licks his lips, “I guess. It’s just a melody stuck in my head, and I taught myself to play it.”

Alex licks his lips and nods his head once, before he leans back.

“I wrote it down,” he admits, and turns the notebook around so that Michael can see the hand drawn staves and notes. There are words written along the bottom of the page, but Michael can barely understand them.

Michael licks his lips and looks up at Alex giving him a smile, “Just don’t forget to put my name in the credits of your first album.”

Alex’s eyes go a little wide and his cheeks go pink as he looks to the side and shakes his head. “I’ll definitely keep that in mind.”

* * * *

The first time that Michael hears Alex voice in three years is on a recording.

Michael finds the CD again because Isobel thinks that if she nags him enough and keeps dropping things on the floor when she comes by, that he’ll start keeping the Airstream cleaner for when she comes over.

But since she barely comes over, Michael doesn’t see the point.

Today he’s moving all of his delicate equipment to the bunker he just managed to buy off of Sanders and when he accidentally moves the desk, something plastic falls from where it was stuck, trapped between the wall and the side of the desk, and clatters to a stop right by his feet.

Michael sees the familiar handwriting spelling out the words, _hope this helps_, and feels like a puppet who got his strings cut off.

He stumbles back hard against the counter and then slides to the floor, holding the CD loosely in his hands.

He remembers being too angry, too bitter, to fucking miserable to even _look _at Alex’s handwriting without wanting to punch something or someone (mainly, Jesse Fucking Manes) in the face. He remembers that he’d tossed the CD aside and had promptly drowned himself in enough acetone to drown out _everything_.

He’d forgotten about it.

Now, he reaches out with his powers and drags the old battery powered stereo over and hopes that there’s enough juice left in the batteries.

He puts the CD in and presses play.

For a few seconds, there’s just static, and then he hears Alex clearing his throat slightly, and then the song starts and Michael freezes.

He remembers the look on Alex’s face when he’d sat Michael down and played him the song he’d formed from the melody that Michael had in his head.

He hadn’t sung to Michael then, but Michael remembers how his mouth kept moving as though he were singing along.

He remembers how he’d slid Alex’s guitar out of his lap before he’d slid into the space left behind and kissed Alex for the first time with no one but the stars as his witness.

The track finishes and the next one starts up, and it’s the same song, only with a piano added.

Michael inhales carefully, and closes his eyes, leaning his head back against the counter as the music washes over him.

The next track starts, and when the soft violins join with the rest of the song, Michael’s breath hitches and he wonders exactly how many instruments Alex had learned to play, and how much he regrets ever meeting Michael because it’s his fault that Alex had to give up his dreams.

Michael spent months too high to care, and steeping in guilt and misery whenever he was sober enough to think about Alex.

But this helps.

It doesn’t make him go quiet, nothing in the universe has the power to do that anymore.

But as the next track starts and the drums kick in along with the bass, Michael thinks that Alex succeeded in one thing, he made Michael feel less alone.

A feeling that expands throughout him like ripples when the last track comes on and Alex begins to sing.

It’s not quiet, but it’s a stillness that Michael hasn’t felt since the last time he had Alex in his arms.

Michael starts the song all over again, pushing the replay button and lies back on the floor.

This time he actually listens to the words, and it takes him three times of listening to the song before he can mouth along.

Michael closes his eyes tight and he imagines Alex sitting right beside him with his guitar cradled in his lap, singing the song to him.

Michael plays the CD until he can’t anymore, until it’s skips too much, and goes fast over Alex’s voice making his voice high pitched and squeaky.

Michael doesn’t realize how much it actually helped until Isobel throws a package at him on their birthday and leans next to him against the counter, taking his beer.

“You’re welcome,” she says and she takes a sip and grimaces that the lukewarm taste of it.

Michael opens the box and furrows his brow at USB styled music player nestled in the white tissue paper.

“It’s the songs from your stupid comfort CD,” she says and Michael freezes, looking down at it.

He had tossed the CD out, he was sure of it, but then again, with Isobel you could never be sure.

“I ripped it to my computer and copied it to that,” she sets the beer aside and goes to the tiny, barely cold fridge to look for a semi cold one. “All of them except the last track. It was too damaged to actually get a clean copy. Sorry.”

She turns around with two beers and offers them out, and Michael swallows hard and opens then absently.

He puts the cover back over the box and sets it aside carefully.

He looks up as Isobel hands him the beer, and she’s smiling gently.

“Thanks,” he says, and her smile widens before she rolls her eyes and leans back against the counter next to him.

“You’re welcome,” she repeats but with less sarcasm.

* * *

The first time that Michael feels like things might work out between them in the long run, Alex is playing the song for him.

Michael had come to the overhang because he wanted to be alone, and every time he came here, there was no one around.

Of course, all those times were when Alex wasn’t in Roswell.

Michael had almost scrapped the whole plan when he noticed that he’d forgotten to bring his headphones with him, but the music player had a tiny speaker that barely worked considering how old it is.

He’s answering a message that Liz sent him while he was driving when he rounds the corner and stops.

Alex is lying back in the rocky terrain a hoodie bunched up beneath his head, a guitar resting against his chest. His hands are wrapped around the fretboard. Michael spies the headphones in his ears, and can just barely hear him humming along to whatever he’s listening to over the wind.

It’s been a few weeks since the drive in, and the pain of watching Alex walk away still feels like rubbing salt on a barely healed wound, but seeing him helps with the ache.

Especially finding him in one of the last places in Roswell where Michael goes when he doesn’t want to be found.

He slides his phone and media player back into his pockets and walks over slowly.

Alex doesn’t seem to notice his presence, and when he starts to sing, Michael freezes for a second just listening to him. He’s never heard him sing any song but the one that he wrote. And he’s never heard him sing in person before.

Michael inhales deeply, and kicks at one of the stones.

It hits Alex lightly, right by his left thigh, and he full body flinches, fingers clenching around the guitar as though he means to use it as a weapon, and he leans up on his elbows and looks straight at Michael.

His eyes go a little wide, and he sits up settling the guitar on his lap and looks away, and there was something in the way that he stared that Michael couldn’t decipher but left him feeling like Alex was afraid of him.

“Guerin,” he says, looking back at Michael with his steely soldier eyes.

Michael pushes aside the thought, maybe he just imagined in.

“Private,” he says mockingly, and as he walks a little closer and sinks down to sitting position a few feet away from Alex.

Alex clenches his jaw and looks away.

Michael gets comfortable, leaning back on his hands and ignoring the buzzing from his cellphone.

Alex exhales and then turns back to look at him, “What are you doing here?”

Michael shrugs, and looks at the blue, blue sky, squinting his eyes against the glare.

“I come here sometimes when I want to be alone.”

Something hits his chest and he looks down to see a pair of sunglasses.

When he looks to Alex, he’s tuning the guitar, fingers careful and slow as though he’s out of practice.

“I can go-” he starts and Michael stretches one of his legs out and taps Alex’s knee with his shoe.

Alex swallows hard and then looks up at Michael.

Michael licks his lips and taps him with his foot again. “Play me something.”

Alex pulls his bottom lip into his mouth, staring at Michael and then nods his head slowly and sets his fingers into position, closing his eyes.

Michael already knows what song he’s going to play before he hears the first note. It’s obvious that being here takes them both back to the same place and time.

Michael remembers wondering why Alex wouldn’t make a move on him when he kept dropping hints, and remembers how the answer came with the crashing, mind numbing pain of a hammer smashing into his hand.

Now Michael watches him play like he’s new at it, stumbling a little over the chords as though he can’t remember where to put his fingers.

Michael swallows hard, and finds himself humming along, and Alex’s eyes snap up to his, fingers stilling on the guitar.

He licks his lips, swallows hard and starts again.

This time it’s smoother. This time he looks at Michael from beneath his fringe and Michael can hear the words he’s not singing crystal clear in his head. This time Michael lets himself look back and doesn’t try to hide.

This time when Michael smiles, Alex smiles back, looking at him with something close to disbelief.

Michael feels his heart stutter in his chest, and he lies back on the ground, placing the sunglasses over his eyes and exhaling deeply, closing his eyes.

He feels more calm and at peace than he has since Isobel stabbed herself with the syringe full of Liz’s serum.

He knew coming out here was a good idea, he’d be no good to Liz if he can’t get his head in some sort of working order.

He just hadn’t realized that it wasn’t _only _Isobel that he’d been missing to stay sane.

He breathes deeply and lets the music wash over him, listening to the whisper soft brush of lips as Alex sings to himself, not loud enough for Michael to hear, being stolen away by the wind before it could reach him.

But it does what it always does, makes him feel still, and he knows he might never get the quiet back, but here he doesn’t feel the need to get away from himself, or be someone he’s not, not when he’s with Alex.

Alex goes through the song again as though he knows that Michael needs it, and Michael thinks that maybe things between them will turn out okay in the end.

He just has to give Alex more time, and he can definitely do that.

* *

The first time that Michael hurts Alex on purpose very nearly kills him.

Michael feels lost and untethered without Max, without Isobel’s steady presence, just a flickering shadow in the back of his mind as she drowns in her grief and suffocates him.

Michael finds himself at the overhang, standing right at the edge as he looks up at the darkening sky.

For a solid single moment, before Max’s death hit him with the blunt force of a baseball bat to the back of the head, Michael had felt quiet for the first time in over ten years.

But now Max is gone, and all that Michael can feel is pain, and when he feels a hand on his shoulder he flinches away too hard.

He turns to see Alex standing there, brow furrowed, mouth shaping the words _are you okay_, hands tucked into his pockets, guitar strapped to his back, and something inside of Michael just cracks wide open.

“It’s a lullaby,” he says, and it feels like it’s been torn out of him.

Alex freezes completely, eyes wide, not even breathing.

“She said she used to sing it to me all of the time.”

Alex doesn’t even blink.

“She said the words you wrote for it were perfect.”

Alex moves at that, flinching backwards his eyes getting even wider if possible.

“She said that she’d always hoped I was free and had found a family, and someone who loved me as much as she does.”

Michael smiles humorlessly, and Alex swallows hard, looking away.

“But she didn’t know that love wasn’t enough,” he continues and his voice cracking.

Alex’s eyes snap back to him.

“It wasn’t enough to stop you from leaving and it’s not enough to stop me.”

Alex’s eyes fall shut.

“It’s not enough to stop me from feeling like you’re the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Alex shuts his eyes even tighter.

“You’re tied up with every terrible moment in my life, and I can’t even look at you, and now-”

Michael clears his throat. “And now, the only thing that I have to remember her by is already all tangled up with you as well.”

“And I tried to replace the memory,” he starts. “Went to the Wild Pony and tried to play-”

Alex makes a noise like Michael hit him, interrupting him and stepping back. He doesn’t open his eyes as he turns saying. “I have to go.”

“Alex,” Michael says, needing to finish, but Alex just speeds up.

“It’s not that I don’t love you,” he yells, and Alex stumbles to a stop. “It just hurts too much.”

Alex shakes his head, and starts walking, and he steps wrong on the stone, and slips and starts to slide towards the edge of the overhang.

For a single clear second, Michael’s heart stops as his whole body freezes and he feels like he’s in freefall, the only thing running through his head is that Alex is going to die.

Michael reaches out and stops him right at the edge, fingers straining with the strength he’s using to keep Alex still.

He drops to his knees beside him and lets him go, only to catch him with his hands.

Alex is breathing too hard, and he’s trying to pull away, and Michael’s fingers catch against his arms and he tugs him in close, dragging his hands up to his neck where his pulse beats hard against Michael’s hands.

Alex’s fingers clutch against his jacket and he’s pushing against Michael’s chest.

“Are you okay?” Michael asks breathless. “Alex? Say that you’re okay.”

“I hate you,” Alex gasps out, voice sounding hoarse and painful and wet. “I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.”

Michael’s fingers snag against the collar of Alex’s shirt. “That’s fair,” Michael says, still not able to catch his breath.

Alex gives a humorless laugh, that turns into a sob, and then he’s dragging Michael in close and pressing his face to his shoulder, his breath hitching as he cries.

Michael’s hands shake as he slides his fingers into Alex’s hair and keeps him close.

Alex sobs hiccup to a stop and he presses his forehead harder against Michael’s shoulder. "You’re such a miserable liar,” he says, voice dry and cracked. “But that hurt.”

Michael digs his fingers harder into the back of Alex’s neck, afraid that if he lets go Alex will disappear, like Michael hadn’t saved him.

“I’m sorry that I ruined your mom’s song,” Alex continues, voice even lower when Michael doesn’t say anything.

“Alex,” Michael starts. “That’s not-”

“It’s okay,” Alex says as he grabs Michael’s hands and tugs them away, lifting his head and looking at Michael in the eyes.

Michael can’t help the way that his eyes fill with tears as he gets a look at the way that Alex’s eyes are red and his cheeks are tearstained, and how he’s looking at Michael like Michael is hurting him by being near him.

“I tore us apart because I wanted to keep you safe, and I’m sorry that kept walking away, and if I could do it all over again-” he cuts himself off shaking his head, and squeezing his fingers around Michael’s wrists, before he lets Michael go and pulls the sleeves of his jacket over his fingers.

“But this isn’t about me. This is about you and what you need. But if you’re gonna do this I need you to do me a favor.”

“What?” Michael asks swallowing hard.

“You have to walk away.”

Michael feels his pulse thud hard and sluggish against his temples. “Wha-?”

“I thought I could,” he says looking down, shaking hands clenching the fabric of his sleeves as though he’s stopping himself from reaching out. “But I don’t think I can, not again. So you’re going to have to be strong enough for the both of us.”

“Alex,” he breathes out. “I can’t-”

“You’re the one who said love isn’t enough to stop you from walking away,” Alex says, looking everywhere but at Michael. “Well, I’m not stopping you either.”

Michael licks his lips, and then breathes in deeply.

“Alex, I-”

“Please,” Alex says closing his eyes. “_Don’t_. Just go.”

Michael just nods jerkily and gets to his feet.

He watches Alex, sitting on the floor, his guitar in pieces on the ground behind him, and the way that he keeps his eyes closed, facing the ground and exhales roughly before he tucks his hands into his pockets and walks away.

*

The first time that Michael actually hears Alex sing the song, it’s not to him.

Maria had called him and told him to come pick something up at the bar even though he was going to be there later tonight, but he doesn’t exactly question it.

They’ve been on better terms since the break up, and Michael didn’t want to mess that up.

When he gets to the bar, he regrets the decision immediately.

It’s not that he doesn’t like Xavier, but it is that exactly.

Xavier is dating Alex and therefore Michael hates his guts, especially when Alex comes over to Isobel’s Mandatory Alien Club get togethers with bed hair looking sex stupid.

Xavier is sitting at the bar, and looks to be drinking heavily, and Michael lets curiosity get the better of him.

“Look,” Maria says interrupting the low flow of words that Michael couldn’t exactly decipher with Xavier’s accent. “I think you’re a nice guy and you tip well and all that, but Alex is my friend, and I’m not going to sit here and listen to you bad mouth him, understand?”

Xavier makes a hurt sound and then sighs. “I just don’t understand. I thought things were going great. And then he breaks up with me. Out of nowhere.”

“That doesn’t sound like Alex,” Maria states, and Michael would agree with her, but he’s too busy feeling overwhelmingly relieved.

This is the first time since Alex told him to walk away that they’re both single at the same time.

“Well, it’s what happened,” Xavier snaps and downs his drink. “I proposed and he told me that it wasn’t going to work.”

Michael feels his pulse thud sluggishly in his temples and he’s moving before he’s even aware of it, leaving the bar without even getting whatever it was that Maria wanted him to get.

He would do it later, now he had to find Alex, and he had a feeling that he knew exactly where he was going to be.

Alex is sitting down exactly in the same place he was the first time that Michael found him there with his guitar cradled in his lap.

Michael swallows as Alex’s fingers start strumming the intro to the song.

He laughs suddenly, a bright happy sound and says, “Stop that and listen.”

Michael’s heart thuds hard in his chest as a sour feeling spreads in the pit of his stomach.

While he can’t see anyone, someone could conceivably be lying down in a way that they’re covered by Alex’s body, and Alex could also be talking to someone else on the phone.

Just because Alex broke up with his boyfriend because he proposed to him didn’t mean that he did it because he was still in love with Michael.

He starts playing the song, and Michael feels his heart clenching and the sour feeling turning sharp and painful.

He’d lied when he told Alex that he’d played the song for Maria, but that didn’t mean that Alex actually knew that.

And then he starts to sing and Michael forgets about everything else.

The words are different, taking into account the last twelve years, and Alex’s voice is deeper and rounder and Michael closes his eyes and sinks into it.

He exhales and lets Alex’s voice wash through him, the words tugging against his heart and telling him more than Alex ever would.

He stops suddenly, and says. “So, what do you think?”

“That’s not the way the song goes,” Michael finds himself saying, and he hears an indignant meow as Alex turns fast and gets to his feet, only stumbling slightly as he moves too fast.

Michael looks at the tiny brown kitten that’s glaring at him from where it landed when Alex got up and it tumbled down from his lap.

“What are you doing here?” Alex asks setting the guitar down carefully on the floor.

The kitten jumps up on it and curls up right by the frets, movements causing a slight trembling note to spill in the air.

Michael swallows hard, and sticks his hands in his pockets before he looks up at Alex and raises an eyebrow.

“Why did you break up with him?”

Alex scoffs and looks away before rolling his eyes and giving Michael an incredulous head tilt when he notices that he’s serious.

“You know why, Guerin!” He snaps, taking a step closer. “The same reason that you and Maria could never work out no matter how hard you tried! The same reason that I went through dozens of guys before finding one who didn’t want too much from me!”

“You have to actually say the words, Alex.” Michael says taking a step closer as well.

“I _told _you I don’t look away,” Alex says sounding frustrated. “And I _never _have. I’ve never tried. Not really. Not like you.”

“I’m not going to apologize for not trusting words that you said when you were trying to save my life or for trying to move on,” Michael says swallowing hard. “But you have to know that it didn’t work.”

“That doesn’t make it hurt any less, Guerin.” Alex says sighing and looking up at the sky. “We’ve already gone through this argument a dozen times, and the outcome is not going to change.”

“I didn’t come here to argue,” Michael says and takes another step closer, biting down on his lip when Alex seems to realize how close they’re getting and takes a matching step back.

“I can go if you need-”

“Can I?” he asks interrupting him and motions towards the guitar.

Alex blinks down at the guitar and then back at Michael and shrugs.

The kitten glares at Michael when he lifts it from the guitar and sets it down on the ground.

The kitten hisses at him and then goes to Alex.

Alex picks it up and the kitten is small enough to curl into the curve of his neck comfortably.

“What’s its name?” Michael asks settling down on the floor with Alex’s guitar in his lap.

Alex bites his lip and sinks down on the floor in front of Michael settling the kitten on his lap.

“Rath,” he says like they hadn’t found out that was Michael’s real name months ago. “It seemed appropriate after he tore up all of the rolls of toilet paper in the bathroom after I wouldn’t let him pee all over my clothes.”

Michael snorts in laughter, and places his fingers over the strings, immediately beginning to play the song.

This time Alex sings for him, looking at Michael, and Michael finds that he can’t look away.

The last line another of the lines he changed. Started out as _Love has to be enough_. And now it’s, _When will it be enough?_

Michael stops playing, and Alex cuts himself off immediately straightening his relaxed posture and looking at Michael with wide eyes.

Michael licks his lips and says. “It’s always been enough.”

And when Alex smiles at him, soft and warm, Michael smiles back and starts to play the song again.


End file.
